Am I the only one who reads the old map's place names out loud to spot the copyist's mistakes? | Antique Map Puzzlers

Uma Mitchell · 2026-11-11T16:15:05.131365+00:00

Was at the map room in the Cleveland library last Tuesday and a volunteer there mentioned that scribes copying portolan charts often mangled a name one way on the coast and a different way on the inset. So now I say every label out loud, and on a 1580ish chart of the Adriatic I caught three spellings of the same island. Two of them made sense once I figured out the letter the copyist kept mixing up. Does anyone else do this, or am I just talking to my kitchen table? Curious what letter mix-ups you all keep running into.

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Am I the only one who reads the old map's place names out loud to spot the copyist's mistakes? | Antique Map Puzzlers - The Community Guide